Journey, page 17
Then early one morning I woke up to a noise I thought was rats. I turned the light on and saw Rick going through his boxes of stuff.
Oh. Hi, he said.
Where you been? I said.
He sat in a chair and leaned his head way back like somebody was washing his hair, and it sounded like he had a cold because he was sniffing lots. I saw he was wearing different shoes and a different coat. They looked new.
Then all of a sudden Rick started talking, not excited like he usually did but still staring up at the boards that I guess were actually holding up Baldev’s floor, and even with my bad smell I noticed Rick smelled like lots of beers. He said that after they picked him to be a leader of the future, they gave him a laser rifle that he was supposed to fire at the star. What if you hit him? I asked, and he shut his eyes, blew air out his nose, and said they were going to add the laser beam later. Then Rick said when the Director yelled action and he started running, his helmet slipped over his eyes and he accidentally turned and crashed into the big star right before the huge explosion. He said he was in the only camera angle that they really needed so they had no choice, they had to give him a bigger part in the movie so it didn’t seem weird that he was there.
Does that mean our cheques will be bigger? I said.
He said he guessed it did.
Then I asked when we’d get them because I was hungry. Not yet, he said. Oh, I said.
It’s just like stew, he said. You have to wait. You get impatient.
I asked him if he had any money for us to go get burgers or make something on the hotplate.
No, he said, but there was food and beers at the wrap party. He took a half a sandwich out of his pocket and gave it to me.
Is that where you got those clothes? Were they presents from the wrap party? I asked. I was eating the sandwich as slow as I could, picking pocket fluff from my mouth.
Yeah, he said. Then he got up and said he would go right then and find out where our cheques were.
I asked him if he could read my letter first.
He grabbed it out of my hand and read it really fast.
It’s fine, he said, doesn’t mean anything.
There’s more on the back, I said.
He flipped it and read the back. It’s still fine, he said.
Does it mean they know? I said. That I’m not disabled anymore?
No, he said, and started throwing his things into some grocery bags, but none of his important stuff. And you are still goddamn disabled, he said. It just means they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Good, I said.
Then he dropped the bags and put his hands on his face. You don’t have to work anymore, it ain’t right for you to, he said.
Especially if it’s shit work, I said. Like being extra.
He stood there covering his face for a little bit, breathing weird, and I knew he was really angry because when he took his hands away his face was red and there were veins in it like a bunch of blue candy worms. But then he just gave me a long hug that squeezed my breath and left.
The good part about living with someone is you can sit there and look at their stuff and know they have to come back sometime to get it. He’d left the hot plate and his steeled-toe boots. Sure, he’d taken the pictures of the rotten witch, but he’d left most of his clothes and his favourite baseball cap. I checked outside and he’d left his racing bike, which made me feel even better.
After cleaning the place up a bit I sat for a while on my hunk of foam. I already forgave Rick for getting mad at me because I called his new extra job shit work. He liked to get mad sometimes for bad reasons, so I decided I’d just have to not talk about it ever again and it would be okay. Then I folded up the disabled letter as small as it would go and tried to throw it in the garbage bucket but I missed. I was thinking about how, after working as an extra person from the future for so long, it was like I was becoming a professional waiter, and how that now I could wait for pretty well anything as long as I knew it was coming. I thought about how long it would take for my belly to eat the sandwich Rick gave me, and about how long it would be before my disabled brain wouldn’t be able to stop me from following the smell of Baldev’s wife’s food up the stairs and knocking on their door. I didn’t know how long that would be.
Lue Palmer
I Swallow Creatures Whole
I lie till my belly feels like it’s ’bout to bust. “What’s that on your face!?” Mama screaming at me. “What’s that in your mouth!?” She got my head tilted back, staring down past my teeth into my throat-hole. She got one eye closed and the other staring wide. My brown throat scratch, and my belly set to rumble.
“Lord, this child been swallowing creatures whole!” she say.
Mama look deep deep down into my belly and see: judges with they white-powdered wigs on, they hooved feet and long fingers scratching for the verdict. She see social workers with pickney sacks, and they crawling limbs that reach into windows to snatch up a baby. She see red and blue sirens, falling deep down into the darkness, they colours calling out and trying to clamber onto the walls. She see this child swallowed up the mayor, he wife, three kids, and the mistress.
Mama looking down my throat-hole at them clamouring for air. And me holding belly rumbling, set to burst.
Mama go to the fridge and take out the ginger ale. She spin it till it flat. She hand me a glass. She kiss the top of my head.
I been swallowing creatures whole.
Eden Robinson
Traplines
Dad takes the white marten from the trap.
“Look at that, Will,” he says.
It is limp in his hands. It hasn’t been dead that long.
We tramp through the snow to the end of our trapline. Dad whistles. The goner marten is over his shoulder. From here, it looks like Dad is wearing it. There is nothing else in the other traps. We head back to the truck. The snow crunches. This is the best time for trapping, Dad told me a while ago. This is when the animals are hungry.
Our truck rests by the roadside at an angle. Dad rolls the white marten in a gray canvas cover separate from the others. The marten is flawless, which is rare in these parts. I put my animals beside his and cover them. We get in the truck. Dad turns the radio on and country twang fills the cab. We smell like sweat and oil and pine. Dad hums. I stare out the window. Mrs. Smythe would say the trees here are like the ones on Christmas postcards, tall and heavy with snow. They crowd close to the road. When the wind blows strong enough, the older trees snap and fall on the power lines.
“Well, there’s our Christmas money,” Dad says, snatching a peek at the rearview mirror.
I look back. The wind ruffles the canvases that cover the martens. Dad is smiling. He sits back, steering with one hand. He doesn’t even mind when we are passed by three cars. The lines in his face are loose now. He sings along with a woman who left her husband—even that doesn’t make him mad. We have our Christmas money. At least for now, there’ll be no shouting in the house. It will take Mom and Dad a few days to find something else to fight about.
The drive home is a long one. Dad changes the radio station twice. I search my brain for something to say but my headache is spreading and I don’t feel like talking. He watches the road, though he keeps stealing looks at the back of the truck. I watch the trees and the cars passing us.
One of the cars has two women in it. The woman that isn’t driving waves her hands around as she talks. She reminds me of Mrs. Smythe. They are beside us, then ahead of us, then gone.
Tucca is still as we drive into it. The snow drugs it, makes it lazy. Houses puff cedar smoke and the sweet, sharp smell gets in everyone’s clothes. At school in town, I can close my eyes and tell who’s from the village and who isn’t just by smelling them.
When we get home, we go straight to the basement. Dad gives me the ratty martens and keeps the good ones. He made me start on squirrels when I was in grade five. He put the knife in my hand, saying, “For Christ’s sake, it’s just a squirrel. It’s dead, you stupid knucklehead. It can’t feel anything.”
He made the first cut for me. I swallowed, closed my eyes, and lifted the knife.
“Jesus,” Dad muttered. “Are you a sissy? I got a sissy for a son. Look. It’s just like cutting up a chicken. See? Pretend you’re skinning a chicken.”
Dad showed me, then put another squirrel in front of me, and we didn’t leave the basement until I got it right.
Now Dad is skinning the flawless white marten, using his best knife. His tongue is sticking out the corner of his mouth. He straightens up and shakes his skinning hand. I quickly start on the next marten. It’s perfect except for a scar across its back. It was probably in a fight. We won’t get much for the skin. Dad goes back to work. I stop, clench, unclench my hands. They are stiff.
“Goddamn,” Dad says quietly. I look up, tensing, but Dad starts to smile. He’s finished the marten. It’s ready to be dried and sold. I’ve finished mine too. I look at my hands. They know what to do now without my having to tell them. Dad sings as we go up the creaking stairs. When we get into the hallway I breathe in, smelling fresh baked bread.
Mom is sprawled in front of the TV. Her apron is smudged with flour and she is licking her fingers. When she sees us, she stops and puts her hands in her apron pockets.
“Well?” she says.
Dad grabs her at the waist and whirls her around the living room.
“Greg! Stop it!” she says, laughing.
Flour gets on Dad and cedar chips get on Mom. They talk and I leave, sneaking into the kitchen. I swallow three aspirins for my headache, snatch two buns, and go to my room. I stop in the doorway. Eric is there, plugged into his electric guitar. He looks at the buns and pulls out an earphone.
“Give me one,” he says.
I throw him the smaller bun, and he finishes it in three bites.
“The other one,” he says.
I give him the finger and sit on my bed. I see him thinking about tackling me, but he shrugs and plugs himself back in. I chew on the bun, roll bits of it around in my mouth. It’s still warm, and I wish I had some honey for it or some blueberry jam.
Eric leaves and comes back with six buns. He wolfs them down, cramming them into his mouth. I stick my fingers in my ears and glare at him. He can’t hear himself eat. He notices me and grins. Opens his mouth so I can see. I pull out a mag and turn the pages.
Dad comes in. Eric’s jaw clenches. I go into the kitchen, grabbing another bun. Mom smacks my hand. We hear Eric and Dad starting to yell. Mom rolls her eyes and puts three more loaves in the oven.
“Back later,” I say.
She nods, frowning at her hands.
I walk. Think about going to Billy’s house. He is seeing Elaine, though, and is getting weird. He wrote her a poem yesterday. He couldn’t find anything nice to rhyme with “Elaine” so he didn’t finish it.
“Pain,” Craig said. “Elaine, you pain.”
“Plain Elaine,” Tony said.
Billy smacked Tony and they went at it in the snow. Billy gave him a face wash. That ended it, and we let Billy sit on the steps and write in peace.
“Elaine in the rain,” I say. “Elaine, a flame. Cranes. Danes. Trains. My main Elaine.” I kick at the slush on the ground. Billy is on his own.
I let my feet take me down the street. It starts to snow, tiny ladybug flakes. It is only four but already getting dark. Streetlights flicker on. No one but me is out walking. Snot in my nose freezes. The air is starting to burn my throat. I turn and head home. Eric and Dad should be tired by now.
Another postcard picture. The houses lining the street look snug. I hunch into my jacket. In a few weeks, Christmas lights will go up all over the village. Dad will put ours up two weeks before Christmas. We use the same set every year. We’ll get a tree a week later. Mom’ll decorate it. On Christmas Eve, she’ll put our presents under it. Some of the presents will be wrapped in aluminum because she never buys enough wrapping paper. We’ll eat turkey. Mom and Dad will go to a lot of parties and get really drunk. Eric will go to a lot of parties and get really stoned. Maybe this year I will too. Anything would be better than sitting around with Tony and Craig, listening to them gripe.
I stamp the snow off my sneakers and jeans. I open the door quietly. The TV is on loud. I can tell that it’s a hockey game by the announcer’s voice. I take off my shoes and jacket. The house feels really hot to me after being outside. My face starts to tingle as the skin thaws. I go into the kitchen and take another aspirin.
The kitchen could use some plants. It gets good light in the winter. Mrs. Smythe has filled her kitchen with plants, hanging the ferns by the window where the cats can’t eat them. The Smythes have pictures all over their walls of places they have been—Europe, Africa, Australia. They’ve been everywhere. They can afford it, she says, because they don’t have kids. They had one, a while ago. On the TV there’s a wallet-sized picture of a dark-haired boy with his front teeth missing. He was their kid but he disappeared. Mrs. Smythe fiddles with the picture a lot.
Eric tries to sneak up behind me. His socks make a slithering sound on the floor. I duck just in time and hit him in the stomach.
He doubles over. He has a towel stretched between his hands. His choking game. He punches at me, but I hop out of the way. His fist hits the hot stove. Yelling, he jerks his hand back. I race out of the kitchen and down to the basement. Eric follows me, screaming my name. “Come out, you chicken,” he says. “Come on out and fight.”
I keep still behind a stack of plywood. Eric has the towel ready. After a while, he goes back upstairs and locks the door behind him.
I stand. I can’t hear Mom and Dad. They must have gone out to celebrate the big catch. They’ll probably find a party and go on a bender until Monday, when Dad has to go back to work. I’m alone with Eric, but he’ll leave the house around ten. I can stay out of his way until then.
The basement door bursts open. I scramble under Dad’s tool table. Eric must be stoned. He’s probably been toking up since Mom and Dad left. Pot always makes him mean.
He laughs. “You baby. You fucking baby.” He doesn’t look for me that hard. He thumps loudly up the stairs, slams the door shut, then tiptoes back down and waits. He must think I’m really stupid.
We stay like this for a long time. Eric lights up. In a few minutes, the whole basement smells like pot. Dad will be pissed off if the smoke ruins the white marten. I smile, hoping it does. Eric will really get it then.
“Fuck,” he says and disappears upstairs, not locking the door. I crawl out. My legs are stiff. The pot is making me dizzy.
The woodstove is cooling. I don’t open it because the hinges squeal. It’ll be freezing down here soon. Breathing fast, I climb the stairs. I crack the door open. There are no lights on except in our bedroom. I pull on my jacket and sneakers. I grab some bread and stuff it in my jacket, then run for the door but Eric is blocking it, leering.
“Thought you were sneaky, hey,” he says.
I back into the kitchen. He follows. I wait until he is near before I bend over and ram him. He’s slow because of the pot and slips to the floor. He grabs my ankle, but I kick him in the head and am out the door before he can catch me. I take the steps two at a time. Eric stands on the porch and laughs. I can’t wait until I’m bigger. I’d like to smear him against a wall. Let him see what it feels like. I’d like to smear him so bad.
I munch on some bread as I head for the exit to the highway. Now the snow is coming down in thick, large flakes that melt when they touch my skin. I stand at the exit and wait.
I hear One Eye’s beat-up Ford long before I see it. It clunks down the road and stalls when One Eye stops for me.
“You again. What you doing out here?” he yells at me.
“Waiting for Princess fucking Di,” I say.
“Smart mouth. You keep it up and you can stay out there.”
The back door opens anyway. Snooker and Jim are there. One Eye and Don Wilson are in the front. They all have silver lunch buckets at their feet.
We get into town and I say, “Could you drop me off here?”
One Eye looks back, surprised. He has forgotten about me. He frowns. “Where you going this time of night?”
“Disneyland,” I say.
“Smart mouth,” he says. “Don’t be like your brother. You stay out of trouble.”
I laugh. One Eye slows the car and pulls over. It chokes and sputters. I get out and thank him for the ride. One Eye grunts. He pulls away and I walk to Mrs. Smythe’s.
* * *
—
The first time I saw her house was last spring, when she invited the English class there for a barbecue. The lawn was neat and green and I only saw one dandelion. There were rose bushes in the front and raspberry bushes in the back. I went with Tony and Craig, who got high on the way there. Mrs. Smythe noticed right away. She took them aside and talked to them. They stayed in the poolroom downstairs until the high wore off.
There weren’t any other kids from the village there. Only townies. Kids that Dad says will never dirty their pink hands. They were split into little groups. They talked and ate and laughed and I wandered around alone, feeling like a dork. I was going to go downstairs to Tony and Craig when Mrs. Smythe came up to me, carrying a hot dog. I never noticed her smile until then. Her blue sundress swayed as she walked.
“You weren’t in class yesterday,” she said.
“Stomachache.”
“I was going to tell you how much I liked your essay. You must have done a lot of work on it.”
“Yeah.” I tried to remember what I had written.
